Now that Apple is pushing Safari for Windows, it must be listed as a legitimate competitor to Internet Explorer and Firefox in the browser wars. While it is far behind both of its competitors, for some sites (like this one) it is actually used by a majority of users. And being the only browser on the 4 million + iPhones out there, it actually accounts for quite a bit of Web surfers.
So when thinking of the differences between Safari and the other two, one thing comes to mind: installable toolbars. You know, those Yahoo! or Google toolbars that add an extra slice of buttons at the top of the browser. Or maybe you don’t know. If you are using Safari then you may not even be familiar with these. But the users of other browsers, particularly on Windows, are very familiar. Chances are they have one, or five.
These toolbars install themselves along with other downloads and services. So avoiding the main two: Yahoo! and Google is tough. Then there are the ones like Alexa, StumbleUpon, Microsoft and Complete. Then it seems like lots of entertainment Web sites and gaming sites have their own toolbars. Some software requires that you install a toolbar for it to work. I’ve seen Windows users who cannot resist a toolbar with 10 of these things stacked at the top of their browser. Button city.
What do they do? They provide quick access to searches, like that is a tough thing to do. They provide stats, sometimes, and information about the Web site you are currently browsing. Quite often they also send information back to the service to gather stats on what Web sites people are viewing.
But mostly they are junk. Unnecessary junk. That is probably why they aren’t in Safari. Apple wants Safari to stay clean and fast. By not allowing toolbars at all, they don’t have to worry about it.
I’d love to have the choice of whether or not to add toolbars to my browsing experience, but I can see Apple’s viewpoint. And since I have Firefox running as an alternative on my Mac, along with StumbleUpon and some developer-oriented toolbars, then I can live with it.
(Note: Adobe has not yet updated their main Shockwave link, but you can download Shockwave 11 for Intel Mac here: http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/alternates/)
Adobe, which bought Macromedia some years back, has finally released a version of the Shockwave browser plug-in for Macs with Intel processors. You can get Shockwave version 11 here. Shockwave is a browser plug-in like Flash, but it plays back content created in Adobe Director. The main difference today is that Director allows for the creation of real 3D content, using Open GL on the Mac. There are thousands of Web applications and games in Shockwave that have been unavailable to Intel Mac users since the last released version of Shockwave was only for PowerPC processors. There was a work-around to get Shockwave 10 to work in Safari or Firefox, but it also would slow down browser performance so few people used it.
Once you get the new version of Shockwave, head over to the free online games at GameScene.com to try some Shockwave games like World Conquest, Word Spy, Something Fishy, Block and Roll and Free Style.
There is one catch to Shockwave 11 for Mac, though. It uses a new physics engine for 3D games. Many of the older Shockwave 3D games use an old physics engine and are not compatible. It will take some time for developers to port their old Shockwave 3D games that use physics to work on Macs.
If you have never bought a Windows machine, then you have missed out. That is, you’ve missed out on getting a machine packed with trial versions of software that you most likely don’t want.
Windows users frequently complain about this. They get a new machine that already has lots of desktop icons linking to Internet services and trial software. Some pieces of software are installed right down to the system level, so performance of the machine is already reduced under the burden of extra processes running. Even after uninstalling this software, the only way to get that “fresh clean feeling” is to wipe the drive and re-install Windows. Many people do this.
But Sony added an option to one of it’s Vaio laptops to order it with no trial software. It is called the “Fresh Start” option. But the catch is, it cost $50. That’s right, $50 to get less on your machine. People complained, and after one day, Sony started offering this for free.
Actually, I didn’t think the $50 was that bad. Maybe a little high. But I knew that manufacturers make some money from this trial software. Companies offer them cash to install their software on machines so they can get the trial versions in front of potential users. In turn, one can assume, manufacturers can keep prices for hardware low. There has even been speculation that machines sell at a loss from time to time because the manufacturers make their money from trial software installs.
So the idea of getting a clean machine for, say, $25 more, isn’t that bad. But free is better, I guess. Dell has offered a clean install of Windows on some higher end machines before as well. I guess they figure someone buying a $4000 game machine isn’t going to be signing up for AOL anyway.
So how about Macs? Is this a problem for us? We do get some trial software. Microsoft Office comes on every new Mac as a 30-day trial. Also, iWork. I’ve seen links to ISP sign-up pages as desktop icons in the past, but not recently.
These seem pretty easy to uninstall. Just drag and drop the applications to the trash. And that might be a good idea is you never intend to purchase them. I’ve seen Microsoft Word launch itself when a unknowing user double-clicks on a .doc file they got in an email. What they really want is for TextEdit to open the file, but instead they get the trial version of Word launching.
Still, we’ve got it good. Apple has protected us from the scourge of trial software for the most part. They’ve got an interest in keeping OS X fresh and clean. Microsoft has a similar interest in keeping Windows fresh and clean, but then it is not Microsoft adding this junk, it is the PC manufacturers. In the case of Apple, they are both the producer of the OS, and the hardware manufacturer. And that has made all the difference.
There is a rumor that the Mac Mini will get a refresh later this year. I love the Mac Mini. I don’t really use one but I love it. Here’s why:
1. It fills an important sub-$1000 niche in the Mac world. Not everyone can afford an iMac or MacBook. But for $600 you get a pretty decent OS X Leopard machine.
2. It is a low-priced option to a Mac Pro in terms of a headless Mac. Not everyone likes an all-in-old machine where you are tied to the attached LCD screen. But $2,500 would be too much to pay for being able to use your own LCD.
3. It’s kinda portable. While not being something you can use in your lap like a MacBook, it is small enough to carry from one location to another without loading something into the trunk of your car or packing it in its own case for a plane trip. So it would allow college students to bring it home for a weekend, for instance.
4. It fits well into the living room. Perfect if the Apple TV isn’t quite enough for you, like if you want to also surf the Web or run some other software.
5. It is a great machine for home, if you already have a powerful Mac in the office.
6. It is a great machine for someone who wants to have both a PC and a Mac and share the same screen and keyboard.
7. It makes a great Windows machine. If you need to test software and Web sites in Windows, like I do, but cant bring yourself to buy a normal PC. The Mac Mini runs Windows very well.
8. It makes a great home base Mac for VNC, file serving, Web serving, etc. If you want a machine to be always on and available to be connected to from outside the office, the Mini is a good choice.
9. It doesn’t try to be for everyone. If all Macs were for everyone, we’d all have a Mac Pro, MacBook, iMac and a Mini. The idea is that some models are for some people, and not for others. The Mini doesn’t try to be a computer for everyone, but just serve those who find it to be their best option.
10. It is very powerful. For the top-end of $950, you get a 2.0 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2 Gigs of RAM, 160 GB hard drive, 3 USB ports, a Firewire port, DVI-out, Leopard and iLife 08. The only weak point is the integrated video.
So why don’t I use one? Well, back to point number 9. I use a MacBook Pro. That’s what fits be best. But I love Minis anyway!
So Adobe announced today that it wants to bring Flash to the iPhone using the new SDK. But this presents several problems.
First, the SDK allows developers to create applications, not browser plug-ins. So this is not Flash as most people think of it. It may allow me to create stand-alone applications that run inside Flash as an application, much as stand-alone Flash projectors do on Macs and PCs. But it won’t allow Flash to play inside a Web page, which is what most people expect.
The second problem is that Apple doesn’t allow this kind of thing, according to the SDK guidelines:
“An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise.”
Flash by itself doesn’t do anything, it relies on a Flash movie (swf) to tell it what to do. Apple doesn’t seem to want things like this. This issue has been talked about since the launch of the SDK in regards to Sun’s interest in bringing Java to the iPhone.
So until Apple allows Flash to run as a plug-in in Safari, and Adobe makes a Flash version that runs as a plug-in on Safari, announcements like this one don’t mean much.
So with the Safari 3.1 update today, it moves ahead of the other browsers in a few ways. Safari has had an interesting 12 months. First, it came out for Windows. Not that anyone besides developers are using it on Windows, but it means that sites with special Safari-only abilities can be viewed by Windows users, at least. Then, the iPhone and iPod touch came out, with the Safari browser built in. Not a dumbed-down version of Safari, either. It supports all sorts of special Safari things, like the drawing canvas and drop shadows. So Safari is definitely a major player, even if it is missing the market share.
Now we’ve got three new features in Safari 3.1. The first is Web Fonts. This is the ability for a Web site to use a font that the end-user doesn’t have on their machine. The page will specify the location of the font on the server, and Safari will download and use that font.
The second new feature is CSS transitions. Designers can specify various transitions in their style sheets. For instance, when a user moves the cursor over an element on the page, it can smoothly transition from one border size to another. Or an element can be made to “rotate.” Hopefully, these will be used well by designers, and not made to simply grab our attention.
The third new feature is the implementation of the
We’ve just completed a new section of MacMost: free iPhone ringtones. We’ve got a dozen categories with several ringtones in each. They are all in .m4r format, and can be easily downloaded and added to your iPhone. We’ve also got a special feature where you can subscribe to each category as a podcast. This will allow you to easily download the ringtones into iTunes, and they should transfer automatically to your iPhone if you have iTunes set to put all ringtones on your iPhone.
So give our new iPhone ringtones section a try and leave feedback here.
Thanks!
I was excited when I saw there would be a Scrabble game for the iPod. It works on the iPod 5th generation, the new iPod Nano and the iPod Classic. I have a 5th gen, so I bought it and downloaded.
The main problem with the game is the small screen. That and the lack of a true pointing device. Viewing the whole board on a tiny screen is too much a strain on the eyes. Scrabble is a game that really requires you to concentrate on the board, visualizing letter combinations. I can watch a movie on my iPod, but playing this game for 30 minutes is different.
Also, using the scroll wheel is difficult. Placing letters in a 2d board using a device that allows you to navigate in 1d takes a long time. It is too hard to try out letter combinations. You simply have to do so in your mind. But if you play Scrabble like I do, you are trying to create multiple words at once, by lying letters next to other letters and getting 3, 4 or even 5 words out of one turn.
What I am comparing the iPod game to is the Windows version of the game. They look similar, actually. I play the Windows game a lot. It is probably half of the reason I run Parallels on my Mac. The Windows version is so much fun to use. You can play against a variety of AIs, and quickly arrange and re-arrange letters on the board to try things out. Not only is it fun, but it has made me such a better Scrabble player.
There is a Mac version of Scrabble, too, released after I had bought the Windows one. I think if anything, this iPod version has encouraged me to download and buy the Mac game. But I doubt I’ll ever try to play the iPod version again.
So yet another rumor this week that the Beatles catalog will finally be available in downloadable format, on iTunes. But it seems to be another false rumor. There seems to have been hundreds of such stories since the launch of iTunes, and yet still no Beatles. Meanwhile, other bands go online without so much as a mention.
So, why the obsession with the Beatles?
Well, there are many reasons. When the Beatles released their music, vinyl records were the format. So it was a major shift when compact discs came out. It only took a few years for the Beatles catalog to be remastered and released on CD, and that event really marked the arrival of CDs and the death of vinyl. So I guess some people think it will finally mark the moment where downloads will be the major distribution method.
Another reason for the hype is the history between Apple and Apple Corps. The later is the company that owns and controls the Beatles recordings. In the 80s, they sued Apple over the trademark of Apple. They settled as long as Apple (then Apple Computer) agreed not to enter the music business. But with the iPod and iTunes, it certainly seemed to Apple Corps that Apple Computer was in the music business. So another lawsuit, and another settlement.
Then, of course, there is the simple popularity of the Beatles and their songs. They have 200+ songs, of which about 150+ can be heard on classic rock or oldies stations at any time. From She Loves You to Let It Be, from Yesterday to Hey Jude, from Love Me Do to Revolution. They have so many recognizable songs, that it must be the most valuable catalog from any one single band.
But there are many reasons not to care whether the Beatles are on iTunes. First, all of their music has been digitally remastered and on CD for decades. So, there is no lack of availability. I won’t be buying any Beatles downloads, as I already have all the CDs. Are there really that many people out there that want Beatles music, but are waiting for slightly-lower-quality compressed files?
Second, Apple Corps will probably opt for heavy DRM (digital rights management). So it would be available on iTunes, but as protected files. I’d love to be wrong about this. Releasing the Beatles catalog DRM-free would surely be another nail in the coffin of DRM.
In the end it still would be nice to have the Beatles up there on iTunes, maybe just to see some of the youngest generation discovering their music through an iTunes wander.
At yesterday’s press conference, developers from Electronic Arts demoed Spore on the iPhone. But was it really Spore? No. It was a game using Spore elements, yes. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that this won’t actually become a real game. We’ll never see it again.
Now don’t get me wrong, I think there will be all sorts of cool games coming out for the iPhone in June. Just Spore won’t be one of them.
The applications we saw yesterday were developed in two weeks by teams of developers sent to Apple. They were testing the SDK, and giving Apple something to show at the press conference. I’m sure that Apple was thrilled when the EA guys decided to take some art from Spore to make a quick game. It looked great at the press conference and made headlines.
But Spore is going to be one of the most advanced games ever made when it comes out. It will probably take a pretty decent computer or console to run it. The real Spore just isn’t going to work on the little iPhone. A dumbed-down version of Spore, or a Spore mini-game would be the only option. But with EA trying hard to make its September release date for Spore, I don’t see them dedicating resources to make a Spore mini-game for the iPhone.
And for those of us who can’t wait for Spore to come out, we’re not going to be getting it on the iPhone. We’re going to want it for our PCs and consoles. Why play a mini-game when we can play the real thing? And why settle for a mini-game and spend our time playing a mini-game when we can be spending our time on the real thing?
So, in the end, a Spore game for the iPhone just doesn’t make sense. But there will be some great games for the iPhone no doubt. So don’t worry.
